The list opens a new branch in Slovakia and is looking for people to join its team. They will also work on a new IPTV project AN INTERVIEW
He comes to Slovakia in the Czech Republic, but Seznam.cz is also very well known in our country. The company opens a new branch here and expands its team. He is looking for people for various jobs and we are also preparing a very interesting IPTV project. We spoke with Igor Kalaš, Director of Business Development.
You are opening a branch in Bratislava. What exactly is the List and what projects will it specifically deal with in Slovakia?
around the autumn of last year, we said that it made sense to expand the scope of new people from the Czech Republic to Slovakia. The list has many proprietary technologies that can be interesting for many Slovaks in terms of participating in their development.
We actually have a search that we can compete with for quality services, our e-mail is used by almost 7 million users and we are also proud of Mapy.cz. In recent years, we have also focused on car navigation, in which we have invested a lot of energy. We’ve added real-time traffic information and a host of other new features.
The list is also the largest media house in the Czech Republic. We have a robust content management system for all our content services, content recommendation systems, the Stream video platform, as well as our own cloud infrastructure. In Bratislava, we are building a team for mobile users who will focus on cutting-edge video technologies and are preparing a new product that will be designed for millions of television viewers.
The Stream platform has expanded considerably in recent years, with 3 million real users a month. What has changed?
The stream is currently part of the List. It is a platform that is open to partners who have video content. We require them to upload exclusivity to other platforms as well. We are open in this regard.
In the past, we only had our own video content on Stream, in the last time, the number of content videos has multiplied thanks to our partner. For example, in 2021, partner content generated approximately two-thirds of all views.
Because Stream videos can often appear on the List homepage, they can often reach a wider audience. We share video advertising revenue with our partners, so it’s interesting to them as well, because it’s another channel through which we can secure funding for additional video production.
The idea of the branch together with the stream merged well into the idea of how to move the video content further, and a logical outcome was possible to enter the IPTV provider.
So you’re preparing IPTV. Only in Slovakia people also for this segment?
We want to enter this segment precisely in order to expand the video footage that we already have on the List. We also advertise most of the job positions associated with this IPTV project in Slovakia.
We would like to build mobile development teams for Android and iOS, which develop mobile applications, applications for tablets, Android TV and Apple TV just for the IPTV service. We would like to extend the team to other platforms, such as Tizen from Samsung and the like. We will not even defend ourselves in the Huawei AppGallery store.
We will develop these applications from scratch. There are many opportunities to work with colleagues within the List and other divisions. The first attempt started on April 1, but not yet for the IPTV project. We want new colleagues to be an integral part of the List, so that it is not just a deferred branch that works for someone.
When could we see IPTV and how will it work?
We are preparing the whole project. We do not want to be corporate, even though we are a large company with almost 1,600 employees. We plan to launch the product relatively quickly, but we do not want to mention it specifically.
We’d like to create a whole new approach to consuming video content that we haven’t seen nearby yet. Having a huge video on one platform along with the partner content of the live content archive is a big challenge. In particular, it is a way of presenting it to users so that they are not confused.
Content personalization will also play a big role in this project. we will try to try ten content that he wants to watch. We develop the platform from scratch and approach it as a classic startup. We hire people in different positions and we think this approach is really motivating.
Could you briefly introduce us to the technology you work with? Which are you most proud of?
We really have a lot of technology. We have our own data centers, but also a private cloud, which we consider to be key technologies and are very important. We also make our own servers exactly to what we need. We operate more than 1,000 new servers quarterly.
Of course, these new ones also partially replace the older need, but enlargement itself plays a big role here.
So what are your plans in Slovakia?
We want to create a full-fledged List branch from the Slovak branch. By starting from scratch, we can set it up the way we want. The branch will focus on development and product. People who are in Slovakia and want to work with interesting technologies that use contributions will have the opportunity. We have currently published already more than 25 jobs.
It can also be interesting for Slovaks who, for example, live in the Czech Republic and would like to return to Slovakia, know the List and have not yet found the right job in Slovakia.